The Unix Terminal

The Unix Terminal (also known as the Console) is a box where commands can be typed. It is comparable to the Windows Command Prompt.

On Linux desktop-based systems, there is a menu icon for the terminal or console.

What's in a name?

Historically in the 1970s, the input device was a teletypewriter (this is why the special file which connects the terminal is called tty). TTY communication took place through a serial port, where information was typed in and the answer would come back via print on a page.

In fact, I used such a machine back in 1979, when studying 'O' level computing. My high school had a teletype with 300-baud acoustic coupler modem which dialed into the University of East Anglia mainframe. The teletype made a wonderful "chunk chunk chunk" sound and it even had a punched paper tape system for storing and loading your programs.

By the end of the decade, CRT-based terminals were starting to emerge, such as Dell's VT series. Originally the interface could only print text on the screen, which used 80 columns and 24 lines. The graphical interface evolved later and made it possible to draw pictures and use a pointing device such as a mouse.